Amber Lea’s Reviews > Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture > Status Update

This book references livejournal a lot and I find that hilarious.

This is what I mean: she's talking about a transman, and the transman wants to be referred to as "he" and he's saying that the gender binary is ridiculous, and the author is like, "Gee, that's such a confusing position." Because she doesn't understand how someone can identify as male AND be open to a range of gender identities. How you identify and what you're comfortable with are two different things, clown.

I wish this book spoke with more empathy. There's definitely a judgmental tone and I feel like it detracts from some pretty valid points.

It's getting better. Honestly, I found the first chapter a little problematic. (But still full of valid points that you don't get to hear very often.) Now it's getting into feminist history and at this point I want to mail a copy to Lou Paget with a post-it that says, "Hey man, I think you need to read this."

"Sexuality is inherent, it is a fundamental part of being human, and it is a lot more complicated than we seem to be willing to admit. Different things are attractive to different people and sexual tastes run wide and wild. Yet somehow, we have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be something divorced from the everyday experience of being ourselves."

A-fucking-men.

I feel like this book would have a different tone if it was written today. The "raunch culture" has matured a bit since this book was written and isn't quite the horrible feminist nightmare it used to be. Thus, this book sounds pretty slut-shamey in its word choice at times. But the sex positive moment sucks in that it doesn't address the issues in this book which is why I bought it. So we'll see.

Holy crap this book is really dated.